Marval Movie

Back in the sixties we had Star Trek, where a group of multi-ethnic people would travel into the stars for  the good of the planet and bring peace and equality to different planets and races. Now we have The Walking Dead., where a group of multi-ethnic people travel into a chaotic world where morality is virtually and illusion and the future barley seems to be worth fighting for.

Tomorrowland seeks to remind us of this fact and our situation while trying to get us out of our rut and give us a story were we can work towards something better.

We open with a young boy named Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) who shows up to the worlds science fair of 1964 with a jet-pack. The judge of the entries David Nix (Hugh Laurie) seems fairly impressed but he asks Frank how it will benefit the world? Frank responds "It will inspire people."

Cut to years later were we are now in the present and are now introduced to a young adult named Casey Newton (Britt Robertson). She is full of bouncy, yet grounded fun. She is the daughter of a NASA engineer who is working on a platform that will be demolished soon, so she demolishes the equipment that will demolish the platform. In each of her classes every subject and teacher say the same thing, "the world is boiling up", "distopia", "Orwelion." And in all of them she asks the same question "Can we fix it?"

Casey gets into trouble one day and when her things are returned to her there is a pin with a "T" on it, when she touches the pin she sees Tomorrowland. She tracks down a source that may know about the pin, a pawn shop owned by a very odd couple (one played by Keagan Michael Key).

Tomorrowland itself is a world of a constantly clear bright sky and clean buildings of marble, steel and glass. The look and feel of the place is like something out of The Jetsons, art-deco and Star Trek. It is the kind of place were everyone (except philistines) would like to live, were being creative and smart are your qualification.

Eventually the trail leads her to Frank (George Clooney), now a man. He tells her to abandon her search but she is not deterred and youth clashes with old and a partnership is spawned. 

Brad Bird is a great director of animated films. He is considered one of the best living animation directors. I feel he adds a lot of cartoony physicality to this project. The action scenes and the way they play out are something that are executed with almost too much perfect timing to be anything other than an animated movie. That's not a bad thing, they are vary unique and most of the performances are quite funny.

Bird  also brings numerous creative camera angles to this movie. Though I appreciate any new visual techniques to movies I couldn't workout any of the reasons for these interesting transitions and just rather left me more confused about what I'd just seen rather than giving me some eye protein. A case of style over substance I fear.

What purpose does this film serve? Well obviously is got plenty of people a paycheck, it will more than likely make Disney its money back, but I hope it inspires people, I wish that the children go and see the movie and want to create something else and the adults will be a little less cynical and fight for a better tomorrow.

Rating: 3 stars out of 4